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NASA's Cassini probe executed a critical manoeuvre today to slip through
Saturn's rings and park itself in orbit around the planet after a 3.5 billion
kilometre trip.

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena
received a radio signal from the spacecraft at 7:36pm Pasadena local time (1236
Thursday AEST) indicating the robotic explorer had begun firing its main rocket
for a 96-minute trip through the rings, made up mostly of dust.

A few
minutes earlier, JPL's Mission Control erupted in cheers as scientists and
engineers, some of whom laboured on the project for two decades, heard Cassini
signal it had survived the first of two passes through the rings.

"We have
a Doppler signature that indicates the start of burn," a NASA mission announcer
said to more cheers and high fives in the control room.

Described as the
most capable robotic space explorer ever built, Cassini will spend four years
studying Saturn, its rings and some of its 31 known moons - including Titan, the
largest.

The probe has spent the seven years since its launch from Cape
Canaveral on a circuitous interplanetary journey past Earth, Venus and Jupiter
to Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun. It will orbit Saturn 76 times.

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Scientists said Cassini's survival through the first plane of rings and the
burn that started on schedule boded well for the further success of the "Saturn
orbit insertion."